Quartet
by Phineas Redux
Summary: Four shorts which show the humour, love, and a little tension flowing between the Warrior Princess and the Amazon Queen.


—OOO—

Four shorts which show the humour, love, and a little tension flowing between the Warrior Princess and the Amazon Queen.

—OOO—

**Disclaimer:** MCA/Universal/RenPics own all copyrights to everything related to Xena: Warrior Princess.

—OOO—

**1. 'Angry Gabrielle'**

A Gabrielle warrior story. This is simply a fun little tale which doesn't aspire to be taken seriously. It's short, but it's sweet. Oops! Hope Gabrielle didn't hear that!

—O—

For a morning in September the sun still shone warmly in the cloudless sky. The trees had begun to lose their foliage. Which was alright with Gabrielle, for now she could see their trunks all the easier. And she had good reason to need a clear sight of her target.

"Thunk!"

Once again a powerfully thrown sai quivered in a tree-trunk; once again the only problem being it wasn't the tree Gabrielle had aimed at!

"It's over there." Xena pointed with a waving gesture at a tree some five feet to the right of the now motionless weapon.

"Very funny!" Gabrielle raised her other sai in the air as if aiming at the woman in the leather tunic, then settled for a sneering curl of her lips. "I'll trouble you to know I changed my mind at the last minute! Great warriors do that, you know. You should be grateful I'm here to protect you, at all."

Xena had turned away from her friend, so could safely indulge in an expression which, if seen, would surely have raised Gabrielle's ire. The aspiring warrior however only continued wading through the knee high grass to the tree and pulled at the haft of the deeply buried weapon.

As Gabrielle stood with one hand on the treetrunk, raising the other over her head to reach the sai Xena, watching her, was suddenly overtaken with the graceful beauty of the short but lithe form of her heartmate. Gabrielle did not have Xena's height, but her almost bare back showed powerful muscles coupled with smooth movements that often reminded Xena of a dancer in motion. Suddenly the breath caught in Xena's throat, and something obstructed her eye for an instant.

"I can do better if you wouldn't mind moving off a little way!" The warrior-in-training turned her head, with a sweep of short fair hair, to glance back at her critical onlooker. "Like perhaps, Scythia, for choice!"

Xena bowed her head and made a gesture with her arm as she smiled and moved about thirty feet away to where a small boulder offered a distant enough vantage. Sitting down, she put her sword on her knee and began to polish it with a flat stone, in a rather vague way.

Gabrielle glanced at her friend then, shrugging her shoulders, turned back to her work. She liked to practice her aim as much as possible in her ongoing efforts to, if not equal, at least come close to Xena's expertise and so earn her approval. This was something of a secret aim in Gabrielle's heart, and she would have been mortified if she had known that Xena knew perfectly well what drove her companion.

Again the sai sang through the air; again an innocent tree gave its life for a greater cause; again it was the same tree as previously, not the one she had aimed at.

Xena could hear Gabrielle muttering as she went to retrieve the weapon once more, and was pretty sure she could understand some of the words used. Then Xena raised her eyebrows at the juicy comments now being distantly aimed at the tree which had suffered Gabrielle's attack; Gabrielle appearing to be hinting to the tree that it was its fault and not hers!

Returning, instead of stopping at her aiming point, Gabrielle came over to stand by Xena's side. Xena knew what was coming and mentally braced herself for the explosion.

"People in cities; people in towns; people in villages; people in broken down hovels! They're all the same!"

"How's that, Ga-"

"You'd think they would be grateful. They'd show some gratitude. We save them from giants, warlords, famine and disaster; from that gibbering crackpot Callisto; and Ares' plans to rule the world. And what do we get in return? Oh, Gods. It's Xena! And that—that—blonde girl—what's-her-name! We don't want you here! Call out the guard! Get rid of them!"

Gabrielle sat down in silence on the boulder beside Xena, more from lack of breath than words. But she rallied.

"We go round the known world doing our best and all we get in return is to be despised. I sometimes think nobody's worth our trouble. I think about settling down and selling vegetables in a little shop in Attica for the rest of our lives."

Xena felt somewhat niggled at being shoehorned unceremoniously into the greengrocer trade, but wisely kept her council. Instead she attempted to pour water on Gabrielle's discontent; always a dangerous task.

"Well, we've just got to help them; whether they like it or not. It's our trade; it's what we do. After all, Gabrielle, don't tell me you don't enjoy wading in and kicking—"

"Yeah, yeah. It gets to be fun, in a strange sort of way that I'm not entirely happy with. I wish there was someone—a Philosopher, you know—who could tell me just exactly what was driving us in our minds? Wouldn't that be great? Then we would always know what we were doing; and avoid all the wrong moves and decisions! And the world would be a place of fun and peace and tranquillity! D'you think that will ever be?"

"Gods! I hope not!"

"Pweuwph!" The expression on Gabrielle's face gave all the meaning necessary to her exclamation as she tried to settle more comfortably on the boulder, in the process nearly pushing Xena off.

But Xena only smiled, placing her free arm round the smaller woman's shoulders and trying to console her with something she had overheard in a conversation in town a few days ago. "It isn't the amount of Evil in the world; it's the amount of Good that matters."

But Gabrielle was not to be satisfied. There were still matters that played on her mind and needed attention. "You've been reading too many of those Sophist scrolls again, Xena. I keep telling you it's the Scientific view that's the way forward; Aristotle is your man. But you never listen! Gods! If only people were more trustworthy and not so intent on killing each other!"

"Well, you can always count on at least one friend to be faithful!" Xena smiled broadly as she spoke, leaning a little towards her loved companion.

There was a short pause.

"Yeah. Autolycus is a good man at heart, isn't he!" said the out-of-practice Bard distantly.

Xena stood up and waved her arms aimlessly in the air before walking off determinedly back towards camp.

"Keep practicing, Gabrielle. I'm sure if you try for another couple of hours you may yet scare that tree you're aiming at!"

**The End**

—OOO—

**2. 'Love is Everything'**

A Xena/Gabrielle Love story. This tale takes place at an indeterminiate point after Gabrielle becomes a short haired warrior. I'm not sure if this small tale hangs together well; but it contains an emotional bonding between the lovers which I felt makes it worthwhile.

—O—

It was still early. The two women had decided to pitch camp among the small copse of trees amongst the rolling foothills because the stream they were following had unexpectedly widened into a couple of deep pools among the oaks and birches. It made a perfect place to spend the coming night.

Their horses were fed and left to graze the sweet grass on short hobbles while Xena made a fire beside a boulder a few yards from the encircling trees. She had already brought both their saddles across, throwing one on each side of the small fire. They had decided to leave their evening meal till later, after they had relaxed.

They had passed through the town of Decrosus, far away down the valley now, earlier that day. In fact they had spent some time buying food and a couple of bits of equipment there; but Xena had been grateful to leave. Principally because of Gabrielle's activities there.

The warrior woman scratched her chin, glancing across at the small lithe form of her friend as she bent over the pile of miscellaneous equipment dumped on the ground a few yards away. Xena raised her voice a little as she called to her companion.

"Gabrielle! Do you ever worry about the impression you make on people?"

Turning, as she knelt beside the pile of blankets she was sorting, Gabrielle thought for a few seconds.

"No." She replied unconcernedly.

Xena drummed her fingers slowly on her chin and gazed at the sky.

"I'm just wondering if it was the best thing to start telling that wool merchant, back in Decrosus, what you thought of his stock, and his prices, and particularly his ancestors? He didn't like it, you know!"

"Oh, come on, Warrior Princess! You've gotta bargain with these people. They buy something for a drachma; then put it on sale for four drachma! When it's obviously not worth more than a drachma and a half! You can't let them crush you underfoot. I never hear you congratulating me on the bargains I get for us everywhere!"

"The trouble is, Gabrielle, they're from places we can never go back to again!"

"So we get barred from a few down at heel rag shops here and there. What does that matter?"

"I was just thinking you might consider the gentle, friendly approach. It works, you know!"

Gabrielle stopped what she was doing and turned to her friend with a dangerous glitter in her green eyes.

"I do that with you don't I, Heart and Passion of my life! And I don't see it's got me very far recently!"

"Hades, Gabrielle! You could be a little more giving! Just—just—nicer!"

Gabrielle, who had turned away again, half stood, hesitated, and finally walked off to the edge of the clearing without looking behind her.

—OOO—

Before Xena could say more there was a sparkling flash and the campsite was overwhelmed in the scent of violets, roses, lilies, cedarwood and narcissi. Aphrodite never did anything by half.

"Hello, darlings! Wassup?"

"Aphrodite! Hey!"

Gabrielle dashed back across the short grass to embrace her favourite Goddess in a tight hug. Then stood back to admire the vision of beauty that was the personification of Love.

"Looking good! Where've you been? I haven't seen you for weeks; not since Boeotia! What have you been doing with yourself? Nothing you can't talk about, I hope!"

Aphrodite shrugged her shoulders and pressed her lips together for a moment before breaking out in one of her brilliant grins.

"Places to be, honey. People to get together. This romance thing doesn't run itself, you know." As she spoke she glanced quickly at Xena then carried on intrepidly, looking at the carefree mess around the campsite.

"The usual organisation, I see. Hey! Look at those divine yellow blankets. Yellow is my favourite colour! Don't you agree! Now let me—"

Intercepting what could easily turn into an evening long discussion on house furnishing, as Xena knew from past experience, the warrior grabbed the blanket before it became the basis for a re-design.

"I thought you were busy in Rome? Sorting out the Emperor's love life."

Aphrodite shrugged her shoulders with an expression of helplessness at the memory.

"Love life. Ha! The Romans don't have love lives; they just do it everywhere, all the time! Indiscriminately, you know! Nothing for me to do there but step back out of range and let them get on with their sordid lives. Pshaw!"

The Goddess glanced from one warrior woman to the other with a calculating eye. For all her flashiness she knew what was what.

"How are my bestest friends getting on, these days? Happy as larks and as fresh as daisies still, I hope?"

"How about you and Gabrielle go for a walk along the stream and renew things while I make up the camp here!"

"Don't mind Xena. She's just in one of her moods." Gabrielle gave rather a sour look at her friend before turning to the Vision of Loveliness again. "She thinks I shouldn't be allowed out alone sometimes, you know!"

"Ooh! Sharp!" Aphrodite put an encircling arm around Gabrielle's diminutive form and led her gently away towards the shadows under the nearby cedars. "Now you just come with me, little one, and let me hear everything about your naughty friend. I just adore gossip!"

Xena shook her head in exasperation and bent over the fire once more.

—OOO—

It was half an hour later when Gabrielle re-appeared.

"Aphrodite had to go suddenly. Something about a party in Athens. You know her and parties! She sends her love."

Xena was sitting beside her saddle at the fire and smiled somewhat hesitantly at Gabrielle.

"You know I didn't mean to be rude, back then. I know you love Aphrodite a lot. I'm just feeling a little low at the moment."

Gabrielle sat down on her own saddle watching Xena across the low fire.

"Maybe if you stopped trying to run my life the way you want; and let me live my own life it would help!"

"Oh, come on! I don't do that—"

"Yes! You do, Xena!" The words broke from Gabrielle in a passionate torrent. "Always do this! Don't do that! You're even telling me now how I should behave in the way I talk to people in Taverns and shops and—and—anybody. And as for our personal life! You seem to think I never do anything right anymore! But I do! I do! I just don't know how to get through to you! What is it about me? I see you over the last few weeks looking at me in a strange way! What is it? Tell me, Xena!"

Xena looked at her companion with blinking eyes for a moment, then took courage and gazed steadily at the slight figure across the dancing flames. So small a body; with such a great heart, she thought irrelevantly for a moment. Then she spoke, from her heart.

"I remember you as a young long-haired girl. Straw coloured; and a joyful nature. You had dancing eyes and wonderful stories to tell. Where did that girl go, Gabrielle?"

"That was long ago, Xena. She is a thing of the past. A memory only; not of today."

"She was you, Gabrielle! You!"

"I am me! Here, today! You're looking for a past that can never come back. That won't return!"

"But I love—"

"Stop loving a memory, Xena! Start loving me!"

She raised her face to the sky and reached high with both hands open above her head for a moment; then lowered them and looked straight into Xena's blue eyes.

"As all the Gods know, Xena, that's all I want!" She said quietly.

The anguish evident in her words wrung Xena's heart. She stepped quickly across the few feet separating them and pulled the slight form close, crushing her in her arms. Never letting go, pressing her hands into the small of Gabrielle's back as if she were afraid to ever let go again.

"No-one else in this sorry world loves at all, Gabrielle! Only I for you; and you for I! Nothing else matters! Nothing else is!"

As the shadows darkened in the growing evening the two forms stood locked together, silently, in an embrace that drew its strength from an eternal undying bond.

—OOO—

Xena could hear Gabrielle; her one, her only Gabrielle, splashing around in the deep stream twenty yards away. The morning had broken cloudless and richly blue. It would be a perfect Summer day. An aroma of all that was fresh and alive wafted across the small clearing from the surrounding trees. In front of Xena, as yet unknown to Gabrielle, stood Aphrodite.

Not the workaday image now, she of the thin negligees and silly voice, Aphrodite Pandemos; but the real, the perfect Aphrodite. The only Goddess who could ever really mean anything in this sad world: Aphrodite Ourania. Goddess of the true Heavens; and the love of body and soul between women, and between men also.

And she shone, this revelation of the mystical, with a power that outshone the daylight and made everything around purest gold.

And Xena's legs bent; and she knelt down and gently reached out and took the Goddess's hand and brought it to her lips and kissed the Goddess's fingers; and looked up into the Goddess's eyes and was embraced in a wide rippling Ocean of pure Love, for which so many search but so few attain.

**The End**

—OOO—

**3. 'A Little Silver Coin'**

Xena and Gabrielle go to market. This short story has no meaning and no moral. It's just meant to be funny!

Hemitatemorions were real silver coins, inconveniently small, which were obsolete by our heroes time.

—O—

Gabrielle stooped to pick up from the dust at her feet a tiny silver coin. They were walking through the small market in Delphipolis, a largely named diminutive Greek backwater in Boeotia. Gabrielle had her eye on buying various items of which she had been discussing the usefulness with Xena. She stood up with a cry of pleasure, flicking the silver coin in her hand.

"So! What is it?"

"I found a coin! He-He! I'm rich! I found a coin! Some poor fool dropped it, and I'm the new owner. A silver coin! I'm rich! Rich, Xena! Look!"

"Don't be an idiot, Gabrielle!" Xena shook her head at the capering laughing girl by her side. "Stop that! You're embarassing me!"

"But I found a coin! A silver coin! At least I think it's a coin. It is rather small, I admit."

Xena stopped and glanced at the pathetic object in her friend's hand and merely shook her head again.

"You'll need to find a few more of those before you put a payment down on your new palace!"

"Very funny, Xena!" Gabrielle turned the piece of silver around in her hand, looking at the impressions on each side. "Well, it is a coin. It has someone's head on one side, and something I can't make out on the other!"

"That's a coin! Yep!"

"Oh, come on, Xena! Help me! I want to know what I've found. Here, wait; let's ask this stallkeeper. He looks the kind of person who's had years of experience separating people from their money!"

Xena, after rolling her eyes skywards helplessly, stood quietly by while her friend sauntered up to the sharp-eyed owner of a stall of assorted ironware. The glint in his eye as he watched another customer, as he thought, approaching was beautiful to see. Xena kept her distance and observed proceedings without interruption. She had a curious feeling of approaching disaster she couldn't quite pinpoint.

"That's a hemitatemorion." The man answered the question with a good grace, after recovering from the shock of seeing her as a potential customer evaporate like a vision.

"Oh," Gabrielle was intrigued. "What's it worth? Can I buy anything with it?"

"Well," The stallkeeper scratched his chin. "You can buy something with a number of them, supposedly, if you can find enough."

"Oh! How many?"

"Well, a hemitatemorion—which is what you have there, young lady, is worth 1/8 of an obol—"

"What! You're joking!" Gabrielle was disgusted. "I didn't think there were such small coins!"

"Well! Look at it! It is small, isn't it!" The man made this rather unnecessary observation as Gabrielle flipped what was certainly the tiniest coin she had ever seen in the palm of her hand. It was about the size of the nail on her little finger, no larger; she realised, disgustedly.

"So—so how many would I need to make a drachma?" Gabrielle's brow furrowed in the struggle to work out the problem. The stallkeeper, after years of practice, was way ahead of her there.

"48 to a drachma, lady. 192 to a tetradrachm!"

"Oh! So I just need to find that many then I could use them to pay for what a tetradrachm would buy?"

"No, madam!"

"But you just said—"

"I just said that 192 hemitatemorions are equivalent to a tetradrachm." The stallowner shook his head in deprecation of the naive young woman before him. "I didn't say it was the same thing! Oh, no! Not at all!"

"So—?"

"Who wants 192 hemitatemorions? If you had them would you want them?"

"But if I had them, I'd use them at your stall to buy something!" Gabrielle was triumphant. She had, she firmly supposed, hit on the man's most delicate spot—his avarice.

"No, you wouldn't!" He was, in his turn, quite positive. He shook his head with a smile.

"Oh! Why not?" Gabrielle could see she was getting the worst of this discussion and her natural argumentative nature was rapidly coming to the fore. Her hand twitched at her side as if searching for something to grip tightly that she had been used to having ready there in the past.

"Because I wouldn't take them; that's why not!" The man let out a short laugh at the very thought of such an idiotic transaction. "What could I possibly do with a bag-load of hemitatemorions? How would I get rid of them? Can you see anyone taking a handful of hemitatemorions, in change for a tetradrachm, on a 1 drachm purchase they'd made with me? Anyway, they're not produced anymore, thank the Gods!"

"But I found this coin fair and square!" Gabrielle was now dejected with the unexpected outcome of her sudden wealth. "It was just lying there, in the dust, where someone had lost it!"

"Thrown it away, you mean." The stallkeeper was complacent, knowing his facts in a case so pertinent to his own concerns.

"Thrown—thrown it away!" Gabrielle could hardly pronounce the fateful words as the pitiable truth began to dawn on her.

"Well, I mean, young lady! Who wants a hemitatemorion?" The stallowner shrugged his shoulders before turning once again to his produce laid out on the tables in front of the passing citizens. "Completely worthless! And 192 hemitatemorions are just—can you guess!—exactly 192 times as worthless. Nobody wants 'em!"

As the two women walked off Gabrielle disconsolately threw the offending coin high into the air with all her strength.

"To Hades with hemitatemorions! Who do you suppose the idiot was who invented the damn things, Xena?"

For her part Xena kept a wise silence, merely shrugging her shoulders. She knew how her friend dearly loved a bargain in her perambulations through the various markets they went to. And to find a coin in the dust, simply asking to be picked up, and then find out it was entirely worthless! Well, Xena knew exactly what kind of mood the small figure at her side was now in, and had no intention of exacerbating matters further by any unguarded remark.

As the two women proceeded on their way through the milling throng; moving in and out amongst the many stalls of the market, they were followed only by the curious glances and somewhat shocked expressions of the more innocent of the town's citizens as they overheard the loud remarks Gabrielle was addressing to no-one in particular, in vicious tones and a flow of salty language, that for all their clear vulgarity certainly impressed Xena, at least.

**The End**

—OOO—

**4. 'A Vignette of Love'**

Gabrielle muses on Life: Xena muses on Love.

—O—

"Do you want to fight all the time, Xena?"

"No! Of course not! What made you think that?"

"Oh," Gabrielle twisted a strand of grass in her fingers as they both sat beneath the shade of an oak. "just wondering what you would like your life to be, if you weren't a warrior."

"If I wasn't a warrior! I don't understand!"

"Well, I mean—if you gave up fighting, and let the world go hang! What would you do instead?"

"It'll never happen! I fight—that's what I do. If I didn't fight—well, what reason would there be for my existence, Gabrielle?"

"You'd have a life! I mean,—a life of your own. You could have a family; meet someone; live happily ever after! That sort'a thing."

"Got most of that already. With you!"

"Don't evade the issue." Gabrielle shook her head; but grasped the hand of her companion, nonetheless. "Less fighting; more romance! That's what I'm trying to get at!"

"By romance, do you mean ordinary life, Gabrielle?"

"Yeah. I suppose I do."

"We're not ordinary people! People like us don't have ordinary lives. It's just not in the way of things."

"Oh, Gods! You're surely not going to start talking about Destiny, Warrior Princess!"

"Hades—No! Destiny! Hawumph! Rubbish! We make our own lives; that's for sure!"

"Glad to hear it." Gabrielle looked at her companion. "So what're your ideas on giving up fighting and settling down?"

"It's a dream. A nice dream. Something to warm the heart on a cold night under the stars, I suppose." Xena looked up into the clear bright sky. "But it'll never happen! Not for me. Not for us!"

"You sound kinda sorry?"

" 'Course I'm sorry! How wouldn't I be sorry?" She glanced at the small frame of the woman by her side. "All I want is your happiness. But we also have to fight for the happiness of others, too. That just seems to get in the way all the time; whenever we might have the chance to take a different course."

"We—you could make a decision!" Gabrielle examined the long fingers of her friend's hand as she spoke. "Say to yourself—this time! This time is it! We turn right, instead of left. And we don't come back! That's all it'd take!"

"Do you really think so?" Xena brushed a strand of black hair from her eyes as she studied the face looking up into hers. "Could it really be that easy? That simple? We just turn our backs and walk away?"

There was a long pause in the gentle warm afternoon quiet as they sat on, surrounded by waving grass. The oak branches above gave a strong shade and the sound of birds amidst the leaves could be heard as the two women relaxed beneath.

"I suppose not." Gabrielle admitted, as she twisted her fingers in those of the one she loved more than life itself. "We fight so others can survive. So that others can have their lives; like you say. Perhaps, after all, that is our life! Are we here in this life simply to fight, Xena?"

"No, my love! We're here in this life to love! To love each other! And I love you with every iota of feeling and emotion in my body and soul! For ever!"

"I love you, Xena!" Gabrielle looked up; her soft green eyes sparkling in the afternoon light. "As much as I possibly can! Always! Only that; nothing else!"

Beneath the oak the women sat with hands gripped tightly together; their heads leaning softly close, as two people with but a single heart basked in the love that made them one.

**The End**

—OOO—


End file.
